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***Blessings

by Anna Quindlen

Reviewed October 15, 2002.
Random House, New York, 2002.  226 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (F QUI)

I first read Anna Quindlen’s work in an essay “On Bookshelves” in Current Books magazine years ago.  It was a delightful essay, the sort you make copies of and send to your friends.  I’ve continued to watch for her work with interest.

Skip Cuddy, a caretaker at Blessings, discovers a baby left in a cardboard box at the garage doorstep.  Something in him and something about the baby make him decide to keep it.

Skip tries to keep the baby a secret from the last remaining Blessing, Lydia Blessing, an old lady with sharp eyes who is living more and more in the past.  Of course the secret doesn’t last long.

Blessings is the story of these two characters, Skip Cuddy and Lydia Blessing.  Both are deep and rich characters.  It tells how a baby brings them together and transforms their lives.  The story is also about social classes and makes a nice point that people don’t have to end up what they were brought up to be.

There are some sordid details and undercurrents that at first I thought didn’t need to be there.  But the book rises above that just as Skip Cuddy rises above his past by learning to love a sweet little baby.
 
Reviews of other books by Anna Quindlen:
Loud and Clear
Imagined London
Being Perfect
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake